Over the past two decades, Berlin’s growth into an international art metropolis has brought many people to the city. A number of these imports teach art – seemingly in all other cities but Berlin. The city’s two schools providing full-scale arts education – the Universität der Künste (UdK) and the Hochschule Berlin Weissensee – were established long before 1989.

Since 2006, if not before, discussions about the UdK’s organizational and administrative politics have flared up – generated, for one, by the stepping down of Stan Douglas and Daniel Richter as professors, a development the UdK attempted to atone for by appointing prominent professors such as Olafur Eliasson (whose assignment though ends March 2014). Weissensee has seen an outflow of professors with international profiles to teaching posts in other cities – Karin Sander has taught in Zurich since 2007, Katharina Grosse in Düsseldorf since 2010 – and the school has gone the way of appointing guest professors and lecturers.

Reputations, ratings and capacities for reform aside, the question still presents itself whether Berlin, given its manifold art scene, is in need of new models and directions for its art education. In 2006–7, the one-year temporary project unitednationsplaza underscorred the city’s desire for an informal art school mediating its larger, international art discourse.

Does the current situation suffice? If not, what form would a new institute ideally take? frieze d/e asked Monica BONVICINI, Helmut DRAXLER, Tom HOLERT and Robert KUDIELKA for extended responses to these questions. A set of additional artists and theorists also contributed shorter statements.

Finally, six artists and architects – Roger BUNDSCHUH, Eva GRUBINGER, Sabine HORNIG, Michelle HOWARD, KUEHN MALVEZZI, and Studio MIESSEN – were asked to submit concrete drafts for the design and structure of a new art academy.

“der:die:das is a mono thematic magazine based in Zurich. It draws its inspiration from objects of everyday life. Our relationship with the mundane is put to question and deconstructed through the investigation of objects, ideas and stories. The familiar is staged in an unfamiliar way while the alien in the usual is discovered.”